Beyond Visibility: The Disability Inclusion Effect in Advertising

People with disabilities are among the most stigmatized groups in society, and the most underrepresented in advertising. We investigate advertising practices by which brands can include people with disabilities in ways that go beyond mere visibility. Across nine preregistered studies involving both hedonic and functional goods and services, we show a robust positive effect of featuring people with disabilities in advertisements on consumers’ attitudes toward the ad, brand, and product. This disability inclusion effect generalizes broadly across products, endorsers (e.g., customers, models), disabilities (both visible and invisible), and consumer segments (people with and without disabilities). It arises because the brand demonstrates its support for the societal integration of people with disabilities. Accordingly, the effect arises whether the brand includes people with disabilities voluntarily or to comply with industry regulation, because both actions can produce the same perceived outcome—meaningful, concrete support of people with disabilities. On the contrary, the effect disappears when a brand’s portrayal emphasizes vulnerability or impairment rather than agency and social inclusion, or the brand conspicuously highlights the model’s disability in the ad itself in a tokenizing manner. Collectively, these studies reveal how managers can support people with disabilities and earn consumers’ patronage without risking their backlash.